Yup, that is one thing he can do, contribute to the existing kano fork, however, it seems like for many years Kano is the sole contributor of that repo, so i am not sure if there is much that needs doing.
...
One thing that does need doing is adding the combined voltage and per-chip speed tuning that makes VNISH and other 3rd party closed FW attractive. It would make many folks rather happy to see them take a hit from Open Source firmware that does that.
Overall speed tuning is already in cgminer but it is not per-chip and starting with Sidehack's A1 series voltage control has been implemented but AFAIK it is not part of the tuning process.